Testimonial letter from Thomas C. Greening
This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.
This letter is from Thomas C. Greening PhD. It is "Exhibit A-1747" in the Noles collection.
The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.
JOURNAL OF HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY To Whom It May Concern: As a licensed clinical psychologist in California, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and Editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, I wish to testify to the excellent international reputation held by Bhagwan Rajneesh in the fields of psychology and theology. I believe he is one of the world’s great scholars and teachers. This letter is a follow-up to one I wrote in April 1982 (attached) in which I recommended that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh be encouraged to remain in the United States. Since then I have continued to read about his work in newspapers and in scholarly articles by people within and outside his organization. I have also talked to people who are part of his organization and others who have visited the Oregon ranch as observers. I continue to be impressed by the contributions he is making to American culture and to the lives of many people. The Summer 1983 issue of the journal I edit will contain an article by William T. Drennen on Rajneesh’s psychological and community-building work written from the perspective of a sceptical outsider. He was very positive in his evaluation. When the article is published I will be glad to supply a copy. I urge that Rajneesh be allowed to immigrate to the United States so that the people of this country can benefit from his wisdom. Sincerely, |
(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)